‘New Girl’ Series Finale: Zooey Deschanel On Jess’s Fate, Her Take On How Series Could Have Ended, & Future Plans

Spoiler alert: This article contains details of tonight’s two-episode series finale of Fox’s New Girl.

Who’s that girl? It’s Jess Day, who is moving on to bigger and better things.

Tonight - Fox - Episodes - New - Girl

Tonight, Fox aired the final two episodes of New Girl, the Elizabeth Meriwether comedy starring Zooey Deschanel, which ran for seven seasons and was among the network’s most notable series at 146 episodes and five Primetime Emmy noms. Arriving on air on September 20, 2011, New Girl followed Jess (Deschanel), an offbeat young woman who, after a bad breakup, moved into an apartment loft with three idiosyncratic, single men—Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris) and future love interest Nick (Jake Johnson).

The first of tonight’s episodes, “The Curse of the Pirate Bride,” catches up with the newly-engaged Nick and Jess—following oh-so-many episodes of “Will they, Won’t They?”—as they prepare to get married, and are savagely roasted by Winston and Schmitt with their typically off-kilter comedic timing. Caught in bed together by Jess’s mother, Joan Day (Jamie Lee Curtis), on the morning of their big day, Nick and Jess are told that they may have just cursed their own wedding. The couple then sees evidence of this everywhere, as Jess falls flat on her face, scratching her cornea; Russell (Dermot Mulroney) makes one last pass at Jess; and Nick’s new book is rejected.

Midst - Antics - Episode - Life - Aly

In the midst of all these antics, the episode culminates in new life, as Aly (Nasim Pedrad)’s water breaks and Winston sees his first child brought into the world, with a name only he could love. To cap it all off, Nick and Jess are wed in the hospital, surrounded by plenty of familiar faces.

While “The Curse of the Pirate Bride” brings most of the action, series finale “Engram Pattersky” plays as an epilogue. As Jess coaxes her former roommates and best...